It’s a well-established narrative — San Jose and San Francisco are experiencing a housing crisis.

But rising prices and low inventory aren’t endemic to the Bay Area. Michigan metropolitan areas, in particular, stood out in April for competition and price growth, according to new data from real estate brokerage Redfin.

“Homes in Grand Rapids are selling as fast as homes in the Bay Area,” said Redfin Chief Economist Nela Richardson, citing its strong economy and high demand. Homes in both Grand Rapids and San Jose spent nine median days on the market.

The median home price in Grand Rapids is $181,447, representing a 10.2% increase from this time last year, according to Zillow data. In San Jose, the median home costs $1.1 million, which is 22.4% higher than last year.

“Grand Rapids and parts of Detroit are both seeing a resurgence. Prices are rising, rates are rising, but wages are not rising — that’s the big concern going forward,” Richardson said in an interview with Yahoo Finance. Michigan’s two largest cities were among the metros with highest year-over-year growth in home sales, up 18.3% in Grand Rapids and 15.5% in Detroit, according to Redfin.

Why Grand Rapids?

Denver was April’s fastest market, with half of all homes going into contract after a median of six days on the market. Seattle came in second, with the average home for sale staying on the market for a median of seven days. San Jose, Grand Rapids and Tacoma, Washington, tied for No. 3, with homes going into contract after a median of nine days on the market.

“The economy is diversifying with new companies moving in and expanding thanks to the affordable cost of doing business and ample workforce. As home prices rise, it can be tough for local buyers to compete with buyers from elsewhere who have reverse sticker shock and loaded pockets from selling a home in San Francisco, Boston or Chicago,” said Kent Selders, Redfin market manager in MIchigan.

Grand Rapids was the fastest-growing large metro economy in 2016, followed by Orlando, Nashville, Charlotte and Salt Lake City, according to analysis from Headline Data.

Michigan’s second-largest city is home to a number of large corporations. Spectrum Health, the largest company in Grand Rapids, employs approximately 25,000 workers. Supermarket chain Meijer, consumer goods brand Amway and pharmaceutical company Perrigo are also headquartered in the city. Between 2014 and 2017, Grand Rapids metro’s 28 venture-backed startups — 50% in the life sciences industry — represented 20% of all startups in Michigan (compared to 25% in Detroit), according to the Michigan Venture Capital Association.

Across the U.S., the typical home for sale in April went into contract after a median of 36 days on the market, six days faster than a year earlier and faster than any month since 2010, when Redfin started tracking the market. Among homes that sold last month, 26.2% sold above their list price, up from 24.9% in April 2017.

“As we enter peak home buying season, new listings will be key in maintaining sales growth and moderating the rapid price increases we’ve seen this year,” noted Richardson.

Melody Hahm is a senior writer at Yahoo Finance, covering entrepreneurship, technology and real estate.Follow her on Twitter @melodyhahm.

It’s a well-established narrative — San Jose and San Francisco are experiencing a housing crisis.

But rising prices and low inventory aren’t endemic to the Bay Area. Michigan metropolitan areas, in particular, stood out in April for competition and price growth, according to new data from real estate brokerage Redfin.

“Homes in Grand Rapids are selling as fast as homes in the Bay Area,” said Redfin Chief Economist Nela Richardson, citing its strong economy and high demand. Homes in both Grand Rapids and San Jose spent nine median days on the market.

The median home price in Grand Rapids is $181,447, representing a 10.2% increase from this time last year, according to Zillow data. In San Jose, the median home costs $1.1 million, which is 22.4% higher than last year.

“Grand Rapids and parts of Detroit are both seeing a resurgence. Prices are rising, rates are rising, but wages are not rising — that’s the big concern going forward,” Richardson said in an interview with Yahoo Finance. Michigan’s two largest cities were among the metros with highest year-over-year growth in home sales, up 18.3% in Grand Rapids and 15.5% in Detroit, according to Redfin.

Why Grand Rapids?

Denver was April’s fastest market, with half of all homes going into contract after a median of six days on the market. Seattle came in second, with the average home for sale staying on the market for a median of seven days. San Jose, Grand Rapids and Tacoma, Washington, tied for No. 3, with homes going into contract after a median of nine days on the market.

“The economy is diversifying with new companies moving in and expanding thanks to the affordable cost of doing business and ample workforce. As home prices rise, it can be tough for local buyers to compete with buyers from elsewhere who have reverse sticker shock and loaded pockets from selling a home in San Francisco, Boston or Chicago,” said Kent Selders, Redfin market manager in MIchigan.

Grand Rapids was the fastest-growing large metro economy in 2016, followed by Orlando, Nashville, Charlotte and Salt Lake City, according to analysis from Headline Data.

Michigan’s second-largest city is home to a number of large corporations. Spectrum Health, the largest company in Grand Rapids, employs approximately 25,000 workers. Supermarket chain Meijer, consumer goods brand Amway and pharmaceutical company Perrigo are also headquartered in the city. Between 2014 and 2017, Grand Rapids metro’s 28 venture-backed startups — 50% in the life sciences industry — represented 20% of all startups in Michigan (compared to 25% in Detroit), according to the Michigan Venture Capital Association.

Across the U.S., the typical home for sale in April went into contract after a median of 36 days on the market, six days faster than a year earlier and faster than any month since 2010, when Redfin started tracking the market. Among homes that sold last month, 26.2% sold above their list price, up from 24.9% in April 2017.

“As we enter peak home buying season, new listings will be key in maintaining sales growth and moderating the rapid price increases we’ve seen this year,” noted Richardson.

Melody Hahm is a senior writer at Yahoo Finance, covering entrepreneurship, technology and real estate.Follow her on Twitter @melodyhahm.

Even the first step into the real estate market for many buyers — condominiums — is getting harder to reach in the Bay Area.

Buyers stretching their budgets and looking for deals have driven condo prices up and inventory down to near-record lows, mirroring the trend in single family homes.

The median sale price for a condo unit in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties last month was $810,000, up 20 percent from the same time last year, according to real estate marketing firm Polaris Pacific. Median sale prices for units in Oakland and Emeryville climbed 4.5 percent, to $575,000. And San Francisco gained 2.7 percent, with a median price of $1.17 million.

The combination of high-income tech jobs and limited housing choices has driven the condo market, said Paul Zeger, founder of Polaris Pacific. The once-held family dream of a four-bedroom, two-bath house on a large lot has given way to a more affordable plan — a modern condominium in a good school district, he said.

“Affordability is a huge factor,” Zeger said, adding that new buyers “have to be realistic.”

Sales of existing single-family homes in the Bay Area have been rising every month for the last six years, according to real estate data firm CoreLogic. The median price for homes sold in March in the nine-county region was $850,000. The median home price for a single family home was $1.36 million in Santa Clara County, $1.56 million in San Mateo County, $860,000 in Alameda County and $610,000 in Contra Costa County.

The hottest cities in the Silicon Valley condo market were Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Campbell and Cupertino, where prices rose 30 percent in the last year. Only about 380 new condos are on the market in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, a drop of 40 percent from the previous year, according to Polaris Pacific.

Tony Ngai, an agent with Maxreal Cupertino, said condominiums are still a good entry point into the real estate market for younger buyers. “For millennials, that’s pretty much all they can afford,” he said.

A typical buyer might be a single, tech engineer looking for a place in a city, away from their jobs in Silicon Valley, he said. Even if the owner moves, Ngai said, the condo remains a good investment. “It’s easy for them to rent out,” he said.

Will Doerlich, agent with Realty One in San Ramon, said with rising single family home prices “a number of clients are looking at condos as an alternative.”

One of Doerlich’s clients in Walnut Creek chose to buy a condo in Emeryville as an investment, renting out the one-bedroom instead of moving in. The client still rents a home in Walnut Creek, but found the investment property was a good way to gain equity.

The demand has driven a condo building spree in some Bay Area cities. About 3,000 new units have been approved in the South Bay, with about one-third planned for San Jose. Campbell, Santa Clara and Cupertino have also approved substantial construction projects.

San Francisco has 1,760 units under construction and another 7,400 approved, while Oakland has 265 being built and has green-lighted an additional 1,060 condos.

On the other end of the spectrum, Palo Alto, Los Altos, Mountain View and Menlo Park have no units under construction, according to Polaris Pacific. Those cities are also the most desirable to buyers: the median sale price for a unit in those cities was $1.3 million, with a top price reported at about $2.5 million.

Developers are responding to consumer demand and financing costs and building more condos than apartments in the Bay Area, Zeger said. Low interest rates have also enticed buyers into the market.

A group of state senators wants to spend $5 billion over the next four years on a range of programs to provide more affordable housing and deal with California’s growing homelessness problem.

But now they have to persuade Gov. Jerry Brown to go along with the increased spending, something he’s shown little inclination to do.

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The group, including Bay Area state Sens. Scott Wiener of San Francisco, Nancy Skinner of Berkeley and Jim Beall of San Jose, held a Capitol news conference Wednesday to announce the terms of their proposal and set the stage for negotiations with the governor.

“Our housing shortage is hurting people all over California, including our lowest-income residents, who are being displaced and driven into homelessness due to the incredibly high cost of housing,” Wiener said in a statement. “This budget proposal is a significant investment in our need for more affordable housing.”

The Senate proposal calls for spending $2.1 billion on affordable-housing construction over the next four years, along with $1 billion to deal with long-term homelessness, another $1 billion on short-term homelessness programs and nearly $900 million for programs under SB2, a housing bill that Brown signed in September that is funded by recording fees on real estate documents and some property transactions.

The package is designed to provide help for immediate homelessness and housing needs while also looking down the road for longer-term solutions, such as building more housing and providing money that’s “deeply targeted toward moving chronically homeless individuals … into permanent supportive housing,” according to the subcommittee report. Such housing provides services such as substance-abuse counseling, mental health care and job-search assistance, all designed to keep newly housed people off the street.

While noting that Brown’s budget “made notable investments with an eye toward mitigating the state’s homelessness crisis,” the senators argued that it wasn’t enough.

That could be a tough point to make to Brown, who has said there are many more worthy programs in the state than there is money to pay for them.

“Most people who come to California want more,” Brown said at a conference last week. “If you add up all the mores, we’re totally bankrupt.”

Affordable Housing

Editorial: The Bay Area’s housing crisis has become an

Affordable housing in the comfort of your own home

Senate Bill 918 would address an all-too-common problem: youth

In the budget revise the governor announced Friday, Brown called for stashing much of an $8.8 billion windfall in the state’s rainy day fund and budget reserve. He would spend most of the rest on one-time expenses like deferred maintenance, mental health programs and wildfire prevention, as well as $359 million in this-year-only homelessness funds.

“This is a time to save for our future, not to make pricey promises we can’t keep,” Brown said, pointing toward what he said was an inevitable financial downturn.

Plenty of Democrats disagree with the governor’s priorities, but typically in the nicest possible words.

Brown’s budget “is a strong starting point,” state Sen. Holly Mitchell of Los Angeles, chair of the Senate budget committee, said Friday. But “we have to lift up the families that are struggling now.”

John Wildermuth is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jwildermuth@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jfwildermuth

The California Association of Realtors [CAR] released its Quarterly Housing Affordability report Tuesday and concluded that the recommended yearly salary to buy a house in San Francisco—without potential financial peril—rose to an astounding $333,000-plus, taxes not included.

The Q1 report, which compiled most but not all publicly listed homes in the state from January through the end of March, found that the present median in the city for a single-family home reached $1.61 million.

That’s the same figure estimated by Paragon Real Estate Group in April, so it’s not a surprise. Keep in mind this figure represents asking prices, not sales prices. Alas, that’s the only good news, however, as the home median is up more than $300,000 year over year and roughly $100,000 since the previous quarter.

As usual, numbers were also on the rise almost everywhere in the region, most notably in the South Bay and the along the Peninsula. Here’s the year-over-year breakdown:

San Mateo County: $1.57 million (up $270K)

Santa Clara County: $1.37 million (up $70K)

Marin County: $1.36 million (up $160K)

Alameda County: $875K (up $77K).

Sonoma County: $681K (up $76K).

Napa County: $679K (up $11K)

Contra Costa County: $615K (up $53K)

Solano County: $430K (up $39K)

Of course, the upward momentum means that the recommended yearly household earnings for going all in and buying a median priced house in the Bay Area also rose.

In San Francisco, that number in 2017 was already $267,130/year. Twelve months later the figure has metamorphosed into an even more intimidating $333,270/year.

Note that CAR calculates this figure by assuming a 20 percent down payment, the current median interest rate, and then applying the time-honored (if incredibly naive seeming) standard of keeping housing payments below 30 percent of household income.

In February of this year, mortgage site HSH recommended $176,121/year for SF homebuyers. However, that estimate includes the possibility of buying a condo instead of single-family homes. It also covers the larger “SF metro area” (i.e., other parts of the Bay Area) rather than the city itself.

In April, the Mayor’s Office of Housing estimated that the median SF income for a single person household is now $82,900/year (again, taxes not included).

In 2016 (the most recent year for which figures are available), the U.S. Census estimated that of 356,797 SF households, only 18.4 percent make at least $200,000/year. There’s unfortunately no census data on what fraction of those also make $300,000/year or more.